by Kate Eberlen
‘London, is it?’ she said.
‘En route to Rome,’ he said.
‘En route?’ she mocked.
He waited for the inevitable banter about learning new words from teacher or something like that. He knew she was thinking about it, deciding she was too sophisticated to stoop to that now.
‘So, how did your mum get on today?’ she said, as her train was announced over the speaker.
‘Fine,’ Alf said automatically, not having a clue what she was talking about.
‘Did she get a photo? One of my mates Instagrammed hers. Not sure about that, are you?’
‘Not really,’ said Alf.
‘Oh my God, you don’t actually know, do you?’ said Sadie, reading the expression on his face.
‘Know what?’
‘It probably shouldn’t be me telling you . . .’
Why was it that everyone seemed to know something about his mum that he didn’t?
‘. . . it’s her first scan today,’ Sadie informed him.
‘Scan?’ he repeated.
‘Donna and Gary have only gone and got themselves pregnant!’
The doors to her train opened.
‘So it’s just as well you’re off really, isn’t it?’ Sadie said. ‘They’ll need the room.’
Gina’s dad was well into his forties, but he was like a kid with a PlayStation showing Alf how to operate all the gadgets in his house. If he was out, he could do it all from his mobile phone – switching on the heating, raising the blinds, telling the toilet to clean itself.
‘I’m kidding about the toilet,’ said Stuart. ‘My cleaner does that.’
When he saw the adverts on telly, Alf had never been able to picture who would seriously ask Alexa to order tissues, or play a track. Stuart was that person. Alf could see the point when the whole house was designed with smart technology in mind. When you lived in a two-up-two-down with draughty windows and a ten-year-old fridge, it looked like something in a future you couldn’t yet imagine. In Stuart’s house, it was the present.
Stuart’s garage led straight from the kitchen. You could see his lime-green Porsche sitting there, almost like it was another guest. There was space for another two cars; Gina’s pink Cinquecento was parked up beside the Porsche, the colours bright, like toy cars in a Barbie house.
On their first evening, Stuart ordered in pizzas. With thin, charred crusts, spread with tomato sauce that tasted like tomatoes, and loaded with white cheese that tasted like cream, they weren’t recognizable as the same category of food that Alf had served. Stuart opened a bottle of Barolo and then another, and afterwards he poured shots of Limoncello and proposed a toast.
‘To your new life in Italy!’
Alf had never had good red wine before. It made him feel warm and sleepy.
Gina’s bedroom had mirrored wardrobes, a remote control for the blinds, and underfloor heating. Rabbit, Kitten and Hedgehog lay in their usual places on the bed. There was always a moment of anguish on Gina’s face when Alf swept them onto the floor, as if he should treat them with more tenderness, which was quickly replaced by gleeful anticipation.
Alf was first down the following morning.
‘Latte? Cappuccino? Americano?’ Stuart asked.
‘Couldn’t have a cup of tea, could I?’
‘You can take a bloke out of the North, but you can’t take the North out of a bloke.’
Alf wasn’t sure if it was a criticism or a compliment. Stuart was from the North himself, wasn’t he?
Stuart boiled the kettle, put a tea bag into a big mug, and handed it over. Alf went to the fridge to get some milk. In the swish fitted kitchen, with its granite surfaces and drawers that closed when you gave them the slightest hint of a push, he couldn’t see a bin.
‘Alexa, what do I do with my tea bag?’ Alf asked.
‘Re-ordering tea bags,’ came the reply.
There was a moment when Alf feared he’d pushed his luck. Then Stuart’s expression relaxed.
‘Bin’s under the sink,’ he said.
Stuart drank his espresso in one gulp.
‘Don’t suppose you get hangovers at your age,’ he said. ‘Nothing a mega fry-up won’t fix. Get your jacket.’
‘Gina’s still asleep.’
‘If we waited for Gina, mate, we’d miss the match.’
It was an early kick-off for the Arsenal match. Alf wondered why, if you’d got plasma screens as huge as Stuart’s, you would go out to watch the match in a pub.
Turned out they weren’t going to a pub. They were going to the Emirates Stadium itself.
They sped along the North Circular in the Porsche. The car was so in-your-face and the volume of the Foo Fighters so loud Alf thought that all the people in the ordinary cars they passed were probably wondering whether it was someone famous behind the tinted windows, perhaps even a Premiership footballer.
‘Saw them at Glasto,’ Stuart said.
‘Cool,’ said Alf. ‘Did you camp?’ he asked.
‘Glamping,’ said Stuart. ‘Need a bed at my age!’
He was a cool guy, Alf thought, wondering if he had a girlfriend, maybe more than one. They weren’t close enough mates yet to ask.
Stuart rented a garage in Highbury just so he could put his car there on match days. It cost him two hundred pounds a week. When Alf couldn’t hide his astonishment, Stuart said, ‘Have you any idea what the insurance excess is on this?’
The cafe they went to for breakfast was at the other end of the scale: a greasy spoon with Gunners flags on the walls and everything in red and white, from the mugs and plates to the Formica tables and chequered tiles on the floor. Stuart introduced him to his four mates. There was another estate agent, a City trader and a car salesman. They were minted and much older than Alf, but it didn’t matter because they were all lads talking about football. They sympathized with him supporting Blackpool, but respected it when he declined the loan of an Arsenal shirt. Alf wanted to fit in, but he wasn’t going to wear another team’s strip.
It was the North London derby, Arsenal versus Tottenham, so the atmosphere in the stadium was electric. When the first goal went in, the cheers were huge, but a one-goal lead wasn’t enough to calm the nerves. When the second goal went in, everyone was on their feet, and Alf could see they were proper fans even though he’d always thought of them as a bit soft and southern before.
‘You can come again,’ one of Stuart’s mates told him as they all shook hands at the end, as if his presence had brought the team luck.
Driving back round the North Circular with Radiohead at top volume, Alf glanced across at Stuart. He was a cool dad. For the first time ever, Alf found himself wondering if his own dad would have been cool too. He’d always assumed that his dad would be solid and reliable, like Gary was, but Kieran had ridden a big motorbike and in the only picture Donna had of him, he was wearing a biker’s leather jacket, looking mean.
It occurred to Alf suddenly, just as they were going past IKEA, that he was now older than his dad had been when he died, so nobody could have had any idea what sort of father he would have become.
Maybe Alf’s life would have been completely different, because his mum always said Kieran didn’t like dancing. He probably wouldn’t have appreciated the thought of his son in Lycra. He was an apprentice plumber. Maybe he would have gone on to have his own business, or come down to London where the money was, and ended up with a Porsche himself? Or maybe he would have lived his whole life fitting bathrooms. When he set off that night on his motorbike to see Donna, it probably seemed like the world was opening up for him.
‘You OK, mate?’ Stuart smiled across the dashboard at him.
‘Yeah, good, thanks,’ Alf replied, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
32
March 2018
LETTY
In the months following Marina’s death, Frances had gone through her own periods of anger, blame and exhaustion, but now she seemed to have accepted the loss and was making plans for
the future. The process was very like the Grief Wheel, Letty thought, except that for Frances, it was the loss of the house rather than the loss of Marina that she was adjusting to. In a way, the two were inseparable.
Relations in the family had normalized to the extent that they spent Christmas together. It was one of the most harmonious Christmases Letty could remember. Gone were the superficial arguments in the kitchen about olive oil or goose fat for the roast potatoes, or jelly for the trifle.
It was decided – by Frances – that everyone was too old for presents, and guests were forbidden to bring any more stuff into the house. Stuff was Frances’s latest adversary. As she was no longer working, clearing up had become her principal daytime occupation. The house was so big the family had never had reason to throw anything away, so the task had a Herculean quality, the wardrobes Narnia-like, with boxes behind the rails stuffed with clothes, and the enormous loft looming overhead, still to be investigated.
If Ivo lent a hand at weekends, he seemed to create more problems than he solved by picking through the boxes packed up in the hall ready to take to the charity shop, pulling out items that held specific memories for him, brandishing battered old Dinky Toys, saying, ‘Aren’t these worth money these days?’ as if Frances were, in her drive for clearance, devaluing his legacy.
‘Not if they’re in such poor condition without their original box,’ Frances would protest. ‘We did actually watch Antiques Roadshow together.’
By the time Letty returned to London for the Easter break, the house was clear enough to invite estate agents around to value the property, although they had yet to make a start on Marina’s rooms.
‘Ivo’s still in denial,’ Frances told her, ‘and Rollo says to just bin the lot, but it’s difficult being ruthless on someone else’s behalf.’
Frances was still wary, Letty thought, of trespassing on her mother-in-law’s territory.
‘Shall we tackle it together?’ she volunteered, and was surprised to see gratitude spreading across Frances’s face.
They were making a start on the trunk at the foot of the bed when the doorbell rang.
‘That’ll be the final agent,’ Frances said, glancing at herself in Marina’s mahogany cheval mirror and trying to smooth her hair down. ‘God help us!’ she said, clearly disappointed with what she saw.
The doorbell rang again.
Frances set off down the hall to open it.
Letty heard her mother’s voice becoming a touch posher and more confident, as it always did with visitors.
‘You’ll have to excuse my appearance,’ she said. ‘Endless clearing . . .’
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ The man’s voice was uncannily familiar.
‘Shall we start here?’ Frances said, showing him into the main reception room.
Marina had occupied the two back rooms of the raised ground floor of the house. The large room with a bay at the front had been used by the whole family. Their voices were more muffled in there. Letty stood behind the door to Marina’s bedroom, trying to hear what was being said.
The estate agent was making the right noises, but his voice was all wrong. Northern vowels overlaid with a twang of Essex.
‘Lovely space! There can’t be many of these houses that are still a single dwelling. High ceilings! Must be thirteen feet? Fifteen, is it?’
Letty hadn’t heard the voice for six months. Six months of bracing herself in the Bodleian when she went for a break. Six months of walking out of the back exit and down the alleyway between Brasenose and Exeter colleges, then turning right onto Turl Street instead of walking straight out onto the Broad, for the simple illogical reason that it was a different way from the route they had walked together. Six months of getting the coach instead of the train when she came home for weekends. The fear was not as acute as it had been, but the avoidance strategies had become habits that, because they’d proved successful, she hadn’t been able to drop.
‘Period features! Original fireplace, cornicing . . . You pay a lot for the square footage, but there’s no substitute for quality . . .’
Letty realized she was trapped. If she closed Marina’s door and locked it, her mother would call out, ‘Letty?’ Escaping upstairs would mean running the risk of bumping into them as they came out into the hall. There was no room under Marina’s bed. The cupboards were still full. There wasn’t time. The French doors! Letty ran across the room, trying to turn a key that was stiff with disuse. Frances and Spencer were now in the hallway; she could hear the changed timbre of their voices in the echoey space. Please turn, please turn, she pleaded with the lock. Finally it clicked. She pushed the door open and ran down the corkscrew steps, knowing there were only moments before they looked out of the window at the garden.
Only partially hidden under the wrought-iron lattice, her back pressed against the wall of the basement, she could hear Frances saying in the room above, ‘Garden’s a mess. I’ll get someone to clear it before the photos.’
‘It’s a good size, though,’ he said.
And then the voices drifted away and Letty could breathe again. It was beginning to drizzle and it was unlikely that he’d now want to inspect the garden, she thought, unless they came out onto the patio outside the basement dining room. Letty inched her way round the corner to the side of the building, flattening herself against the wall, praying that the narrow corridor of garden at the side of the house was too overgrown for him to want to explore. The guttering above her head was leaking. As drizzle turned to rain, sporadic drips onto her head became a constant stream of water. Finally, after minutes standing under a freezing waterfall, she heard the front door opening.
‘We’ll be in touch,’ said Frances.
‘I look forward to it,’ he replied.
‘Do you want to borrow an umbrella?’ Frances asked. ‘Actually, I’ve got about a hundred – I could even give you one.’
‘Thanks. I’ll be fine,’ he said.
The front door closing. Splashing footsteps on the black-and-white tiles of the stoop. A glimpse of pointed tan brogues, red socks, the hem of a sharp blue trouser leg. Footsteps echoing down the street, getting more distant until she wasn’t sure whether she was just imagining them.
Letty went back round the building and ran up the wrought-iron staircase, banging on the glass door, which Frances must have closed.
‘What on earth?’ Frances asked, returning to Marina’s bedroom.
‘I’m locked out.’
‘What are you doing out there?’
‘Needed some air.’
Frances sniffed.
‘It does have a bit of an old-lady pong,’ she said. ‘I wonder if he noticed?’
‘You’re not going to go with him, are you?’
‘Stuart?’ said Frances.
‘Stuart?’ Letty repeated.
‘He’s offering by far the best deal. I think things must be worse than they’re saying in the housing market . . .’
‘He sounded so sleazy.’
‘He’s an estate agent, darling.’
‘But . . . I had a bad feeling about him.’
‘You didn’t meet him!’
‘I didn’t want to meet him . . . I could just tell . . .’
‘You think he might put buyers off? I know what you mean. He’s just the wrong side of the line between charming and creepy . . .’
How could Frances have seen in ten minutes what she hadn’t?
‘Please don’t,’ she urged.
Frances gave her an exasperated look.
‘All right,’ she sighed. ‘The one on England’s Lane is nearer, and slightly more civilized, I suppose . . . and Stuart’s given me the ammunition to negotiate the commission down, hasn’t he?’ She suddenly brightened at the prospect of doing a deal.
It started with not being able to sleep and Letty trying to remember mindfulness exercises to slow her breathing, calm the agitation, make her focus on the present. But the anxiety wouldn’t go away. Every night she lay awake, t
urning the details over in her mind. Had something she said led him to their house? Slut. Had she told him they were selling it? Again, she didn’t think so, but he knew that she lived with her grandmother who had died. Perhaps he had made the connection? And yet, if he’d really wanted to stalk her, he surely could have found her in Oxford? Slut. Was she just letting her imagination run away with her? This man was Stuart, but she knew him as Spencer. She was sure it was him. Perhaps it was a name he’d made up for the role, like she had made up Elle? Spencer had said he was a property developer, not an estate agent. Perhaps he did both? Or perhaps all estate agents had aspirations to be property developers. Perhaps it was like altering your name, just slightly, to pretend you were the version of yourself you’d like to be.
Letty tried to concentrate on clearing Marina’s rooms, but every book, every ornament, every item of clothing seemed to hold a memory that she wasn’t yet willing to discard. Sometimes, when Frances put her head round the door to check how it was going, Letty would realize that she had just been sitting, staring. When Frances suggested going for a walk, getting some air, she found some excuse, not wanting to go out and run the risk of bumping into him. If he operated in their area, he was bound to visit other properties, making valuations, conducting viewings with clients. Perhaps he had spotted her in the street and followed her home?
Her appetite disappeared. At mealtimes, she could feel Frances watching her push food around her plate.
One evening, as she was sitting at Marina’s desk, staring at her own reflection in the dark window, she overheard her mother’s agitated voice in the kitchen downstairs telling Ivo, ‘You talk to her! She listens to you! Suggest she goes back to the therapist.’
A few minutes later, her father popped his head around the door.
‘Everything OK, Letty?’
‘Fine.’
Then her mother’s hiss of sarcasm, so loud it was clear she had tiptoed upstairs and was standing right behind him: ‘Oh, well done! That’s so very reassuring!’
Letty stared at the pictures above Marina’s bed. Tranquillity, Idleness, Lesbia and Violets, Sweet Violets, all lolling prettily among Roman ruins.